Saturday, 16 March 2013

Piedra Solitaire

A day that has detoured and contorted, where the map has lied and the wind has been hot and head-on, then has insulted by not providing a room. The distance is mounting, the sun dropping towards an oceanic horizon; time to accept that we’ll have to camp in a tent rather than in a room. Only the possibilities for a stealth site are minute. The desert stretches forward into a blue vanishing point, out to an ocular infinity, these wayward undulations of soft dunes swaying west into the sea. A sandscape devoid of vegetation, a rockscape devoid of any apparel. Still the kilometres accumulate and it’s looking like we will have to wait for dusk and the hundred metre dash off the road, the dark time pitch and a pre-dawn departure, when serendipity steps in. Our guardian angel, who comes in many guises, offers up a series of small volcanic vents, a string of denticulated intrusions that sweep back from the road, a perfect shroud for a camp. Our own private hermitage. The wind packed grit has swept in flowing waves that curl around each protrusion, an interlocking successions of Fujiyamas. Minimised volcanoes with angles of repose. Outlines that please and calm the eye, a solemnity for the mind. It feels sacreligous to even walk, to footprint in this pristine space; and yet I have to desecrate, to dismantle the jigsaw of a shattered plutonic, plundering for guy rope weights to tether our bunkered tent. This humbling knowledge that no human has ever moved, nor ever touched one of these stones. A dispeopled space so devoid of human hospitality, yet offering so much imaginative stimulus.

These soothing sweeps have just one distort, a solitaire, one small insignificant granite stone, set in a monoculture of ground grit. A recluse that has forsaken, a 'deserere' that has left the mother lode, a true deserter. Round, pitted, worn down not by faith or water but by an aeon of flagellation. I pick it up; it’s leaden heavy, rough pocked and perfectly balled. Special. Cherishable. I want to own it. Another keepsake. Yet, too many of these windstones have been collected. They now lie, dysfunctional, in the air-conditioned reception courts and on the clipped irrigated lawns of the multi-starred hotels of the coast, in much the same way that the Inca era, immaculately cut, polished granites can be found in ordinary back gardens all around the Sacred Lake.

It belongs only here. I put it back in the place of no water, the northern Atacama.

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Scroll down to the bottom to see the map and route of this year's adventure.

*** You can also get mini-updates on Facebook - you can find me using my full name (Lesley Peebles Brown). I'm sure there is a smart way to put automatic links in, but my brain has not unfankled that one yet.

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The Conspirators

The Navigator: forager, bean counter and now editor. Best observed when at the checkout, flicking through a dross of coinage from four countries. Understood to have been educated in the mid-70s in NE England before being promoted to a tertiary education in Aberdeen. Executed a u-turn out of science and into self-employed accountancy before landing the dream job as a Steward for Historic Scotland. Came to adventure cycling after having been dragged around as a spousal brake on one too many of Scotland's Munros.

The Chronicler: sometime cook and bike guard. Best observed outside supermarkets or women's underwear shops, avoiding eye contact with over-interested poky-fingered little boys. Emerged out of a Glasgow education in the early 70s then to Aberdeen and a diploma in Agriculture. Picked daffodils, dug potatoes, milked cows, planted trees, cut lettuces, drove JCBs. Came to cycling after running out of Munros.

You understand the charges that have been placed before you? This is one of the worst cases that has ever come before my court. You have wilfully and wantonly flaunted the traditions of this country. You have shown flagrant disrespect for the mores of our society. Not only have you offended on this occasion, but there are a further 6 counts against you, all in the last 10 years. I find your behaviour reprehensible. You are both serial offenders. On all these occasions you have avoided Christmas, and worse, escaped the Scottish winter. How do you plead?